Divers search for ferry victims in near darkness

JeyupS. Kwaak

Once Kim Su-ho slipped into the sea's violent currents in his mission as one of the divers searching the hull of the sunken Sewol ferry, he encountered a hazy nothingness.

The visibility below the surface was so poor that he needed a lantern to check his wristwatch, he said Monday after emerging from the waters off the southwest coast of South Korea.

Five days after the Sewol capsized and dragged 476 people into the sea, inflatable rubber boats ferried black-suited divers back and forth between the coast guard vessels and fishing boats and the submerged bow of the ferry. Their mission: to recover bodies.

Once the divers were in, the current pulled them away from their sole guide, an anchor line.

Mr. Kim had only the line and his hands to lead him toward the ship that sank Wednesday.

"You try 50,000 different things but you don't see anything," said the 42-year-old Mr. Kim, wearing a helmet and head-mounted light. He described the shipwreck area as one of South Korea's worst places for diving.

Through the efforts of Mr. Kim and more than 500 other divers, countless navy, coast guard and government officials and private volunteers, at least 87 bodies have been recovered, according to the latest coast guard tally. Another 215 people remain missing, many of them 16- and 17-year-old high-school students on a spring-break trip.

Koh Myung-seok, a coast-guard official who is helping coordinate the diving efforts, said that by Monday morning, divers had found a way to enter the ship's canteen, a focal point for authorities who suspect many of the remaining bodies are trapped there.

While the recovery of bodies was slow, Mr. Koh said that most of the bodies that have been found wore life jackets, which made their bodies easier to find. Others, it is feared, may have been swept away, making their bodies more difficult to recover.

"If you look at the recovered bodies, nearly all of them were found to be wearing life jackets, which shows that nearly all the passengers had recognized that the ship was sinking," Mr. Koh said.

The wounds of the tragedy have made for raw emotions across South Korea as the country as a whole tries to grasp the extent of the loss.

On Monday, South Korean President Park Geun-hye declared that the actions of the captain and crew of the Sewol were "tantamount to murder."

Ms. Park, speaking at a meeting of advisers, said that the captain and crew that abandoned the foundering ship Wednesday morning had acted in a way that was "utterly unimaginable, legally and ethically."

The statement appeared to resonate with Koreans outraged by TV footage showing the captain, Lee Jun-seok, being among the first to escape the ship as it capsized--in violation of the seafarers' law, which stipulates they must help passengers leave a wrecked ship safely.

But others criticized her remarks online as an attempt to deflect attention away from the government's handling of the disaster, which was marked by early misinformation and criticized by families of those missing as slow and ill-conceived.

Meanwhile, illustrating the emotional distress of those close to the disaster, one of the Sewol's crew members, an engineer, was stopped in what appeared to be a suicide attempt on Monday. The man, who wasn't identified, had been drinking at a motel about 80 kilometers, or 50 miles north of the shipwreck, in the southwestern city of Mokpo, with one of his coworkers when he suddenly drove his colleague out of the room, locking himself in and yelling that he would kill himself.

The colleague called police, who subdued the engineer. He was now being temporarily held by the coast guard for questioning on the ferry's sinking.

Prosecutors have interviewed each of the ship's surviving crew members at least once, but showed no sign they are any closer to understanding the circumstances that led to the ship's capsizing.

Early Monday, four more crew members were detained as part of the investigation, and prosecutors later said they planned to formally arrest them for abandonment and negligence.

With dozens of survivors still to interview, prosecutors say the investigation could stretch on for days.

Some of the answers are likely to come from the ship itself, which authorities say they will lift from the sea eventually, but not without consent from families of those still missing--some of whom continue to hold out hope for survivors.

That keeps the focus on the divers, who get two crucial chances each day to make headway in the search. For two short windows, typically in the early morning and in the afternoon, the direction of the tidal stream reverses and the water stops moving for a few minutes, offering the divers visibility.

When that happens, 500-odd assembled divers go down en masse.

Whether they reach the sunken ferry depends a lot on luck. If a breakable window doesn't present itself within minutes, a diver must come back up as the oxygen tank starts to run low.

Choi Jin-ho, 47, a scuba instructor and diver who joined the search on Monday, said he had been briefed about going down to the third floor of the Sewol, which he found easier said than done.

"Close your eyes," Mr. Choi said, after his dive late Monday. "That's what I saw."

On Mr. Choi's latest dive, he got lucky, stumbling on the iron railings around the ferry's deck, which he used as a guide to move closer.

With the help of a lantern, he was able to illuminate a nearby broken window, through which he knew bodies had been carried out in recent days.

When the tank is full, a diver has 200 bars of oxygen. But by the time Mr. Choi reached the submerged ferry, his oxygen level had fallen to between 100 and 120 bars, much due to his racing heart as he struggled against the robust current during the descent.

Mr. Choi's mission lasted five to 10 minutes in all, he said. He came up empty-handed.

As for Mr. Kim, his task on Monday was to install a new, sixth anchor line, which would be used by the team operating remotely operated underwater vehicles known as ROVs.

The mission was successful, he said, The ROVs were expected to be put into use as early as Tuesday.

Transcripts between the Sewol and marine traffic control released on Sunday painted a picture of chaos and confusion in the ship's final minutes, as traffic controllers urged an evacuation of the ship, only to be told that the boat's communications systems weren't working.

Ms. Park said it appeared Lee Jun-seok, the ship's captain, had hesitated to evacuate passengers, and then "deserted them" by abandoning ship first. She said the captain and crew as well as the ship's owner, would be held accountable.

Mr. Lee, who remains in police detention, has told reporters he didn't order an immediate evacuation because he feared the passengers would be in danger from the strong currents and the cold water.

Kwanwoo Jun in Jindo contributed to this article.

Write to Jeyup S. Kwaak at jeyup.kwaak@wsj.com, Min-Jeong Lee at min-jeong.lee@wsj.com and Jonathan Cheng at jonathan.cheng@wsj.com

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